Chapter IV: BAHIA, or TODOS SANTOS,

Is bounded on the north by the river St. Francesco, on the south by the river Dolce, and on the east by the river Preto, one of the branches of the river Verde.

POPULATION.

39,784 Whites;--49,693 Indians;--68,024 Negroes.

PRINCIPAL TOWN.

The capital of Bahia is St. Salvador; the entrance to which is through the bay of Todos Santos: this bay is two leagues and a half wide. There is a fort on each side of the entrance, intended rather to prevent landing on the coast, than to impede the passage through the bay, which is thirteen or fourteen leagues in length, and full of little islands, containing cotton-trees. The bay is narrow towards the town, which overlooks it, and is built on the side of a steep hill; it is, however, a very good port, safe, and capable of containing a great fleet. St. Salvador contains more than two thousand houses, the greatest part of which are magnificent buildings.

COMMERCE.

Sugar and cotton make but a small part of the Bahia trade. Tobacco and the whale-fishery are the principal. The annual product of the latter amounted, twenty years since, to 3,530 pipes of oil; which, at the price of a hundred and seventy-five French livres each (7l. 5s. 6d.), amounted to six hundred and seventeen thousand seven hundred and fifty French livres (25,739l. 11s. 8d.); and two thousand and ninety quintals of whalebone, which, at a hundred and fifty livres (6l. 5s.) a quintal, make three hundred and thirteen thousand five hundred livres (13,062l. 10s.). Total of the two sums, nine hundred and thirty-one thousand two hundred and fifty French livres (38,802l. 1s. 8d.), of which the persons employed in this commerce paid three hundred thousand livres (12,500l.) to the government; the expenses did not exceed two hundred and sixty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty livres (11,197l. 18s. 4d.), consequently they had a profit of three hundred and sixty-two thousand five hundred livres (15,104l. 3s. 4d.). Tobacco, though cultivated throughout the whole of Brazil, makes but a very unimportant object of commerce any where but in Bahia. It succeeds extremely well in a spot of ground extending 90 leagues, and is particularly fine in the district of _Cachoeira_. Ten thousand quintals of an inferior kind of tobacco are sent every year from Brazil to the coasts of Africa, which being sold for eighteen French livres the hundred weight, amount to a hundred and eighty thousand livres (7,500l.); fifty-eight thousand five hundred quintals are also sent annually to Portugal, and sold, on entering that country, at forty livres (1l. 13s. 4d.) the hundred weight, which amount to two millions three hundred and forty thousand French livres (97,500l.). Total of the two sums, two millions five hundred and twenty thousand livres (105,000l.). The finest tobacco is exported to Genoa, that of the second quality to Spain and Portugal, and a still inferior sort to France and Hamburgh. The consumption of this Article at Madeira and the Azores does not exceed 740,000 cwt. for smoaking; and 528,000 cwt. when made into snuff. The sale of these different kinds of tobacco does not bring in more than five millions four hundred and eighty-one thousand two hundred and fifty livres (228,383l. 18s. 4d.) to government. The profit arising from the sale of snuff in the East Indies and in Africa, belongs to the queen of Portugal. The quantity usually sent to the abovementioned countries amounts to about a hundred and fifty quintals, bringing in four hundred and fifty thousand livres (18,750l.). The golden mines of Jacobina and Rio-das-Contas have been worked, and are situated in Bahia.